


A Family's Answers

by jalendavi_lady



Series: Winry And Roy series from fma_fic_contest [13]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - First Anime, Community: fma_fic_contest, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-01
Updated: 2010-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A knock on the door gives Pinako Rockbell answers to questions she's been silently asking for decades about the deaths of her youngest two sons in Ishbal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Family's Answers

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Suffering/Loss (501-1000 words) prompt at [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fma_fic_contest/profile)[**fma_fic_contest**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fma_fic_contest/) .

General Roy Mustang, Retired (he loved writing that) had spent the entirety of the morning lying on his back in the Rockbell family's living room, shining a lamp up the chimney.

Winry had come back home for an autumn holiday a few days earlier, and Roy had accompanied her to give his annual fireplace check.

Always better to have company on a train ride.

It was nearly lunchtime, and he could hear Winry humming in the kitchen.

Roy smiled. He'd never thought he'd be comfortable here, and yet...

A knock came at the door, and two full decades as an officer meant that his heart was already in his feet before he got up.

He knew the sound too well.

...

An officer and a chaplain sat in Pinako's armchairs while Pinako and Winry sat on the couch.

Roy had insisted on staying in the room with Pinako's approval, even after the men had said their business was not a recent death.

He already found it disturbing that there had been no surprise at all that Roy was there. They had incomplete information about the family – even just considering military knowledge. Urey and Sara Rockbell's deaths had been no secret.

"Mrs. Rockbell, the recent declassifications of records dating to the early years of the Ishbalan War mean that new information regarding your sons Elias and Rambert has come to light."

She snorted. Roy was at the far right end of the couch but he could almost see the look on her face anyway. "You mean you're finally allowed to tell me."

"Just so. Due to secrecy at the time, their units were recorded as regular infantry."

"What were they?" Roy could hear the shake in Winry's voice. If Pinako hadn't been between them, he'd have tried to comfort her.

He didn't know where this was going, but he certainly didn't like it.

"Sharpshooters."

Pinako swore.

"And now," she continued after the outburst, "I suppose you're going to tell me the _real_ story about how they died, the reason all my applications for the honors due a dead soldier's mother were reported lost?"

Feet shuffled.

Roy supposed they had never met a woman like Pinako before.

It was easier to think about that than the shame of non-recognition she had told him about, years ago when he'd learned of the two younger Rockbell brothers.

"They disobeyed orders in a war zone," was the eventual grim answer.

Roy felt his eye go wide even as he tried to stop the reaction. That statement as much as claimed outright that Pinako Rockbell had lost her sons, all three of them, at the hands of the state.

And now, Pinako sounded as angry as Roy had ever heard her. "'Disobeyed orders'? The both of them? In separate units? Not even a week apart?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

" _What. Were. The. Orders?_ " she practically hissed. "Why did the state take my boys away?"

Roy tensed, ready to block her if she got angry enough to physically react. Words were one thing, particularly in this context, but...

"There was a change of policy regarding legitimate wartime targets."

 _  
**NO.**   
_

He knew what that meant. Exactly what it meant, in the coded language that had made everything All Right in the middle of the warzone.

He heard Winry's gasp.

"Civilians," he finally spat out. "They were ordered to kill civilians."

Neither of the men denied it.

Pinako's breathing hitched.

He used the momentary advantage while he had it. "Gentlemen," Roy said in a voice that was intentionally grating, "I presume your orders included reading the information available on the family you had to give this cruel news to."

"Of course."

"Then why did you disobey _your_ orders and neglect to read all of it?"

There was a moment of fumbled pages.

They looked up at him, down again, and back up, their jaws slightly dropping.

"Now apologize. For not knowing anything about the pain this family has already endured before you came through that door and treated them so callously!"

...

The men retreated, leaving a small pile of documentation behind them on an end table.

There was a moment of complete silence, except for Pinako's sobs. Roy turned so he could see them, and Winry wrapped her arms around the older woman.

"I hope that the dead do watch the living, Roy. I hope my husband and sons are watching, and can see how well taken care of we are!"

He sat there, flabbergasted, before hugging both of them in silent support.

...

Pinako asked Roy to stay an extra few days, and he did.

A benefit of retirement.

He knew what she was planning, and he knew that she knew that.

So it was no surprise when she asked him what had happened that day in Ishbal, and it was no surprise that he was, at last, willing to answer.

She sat there, without offering judgment, as he told her of the orders he had received.

Gran had escorted him to the building. Nothing had been as he'd been told.

Gran had threatened _him_ with battlefield execution.

Reflex had taken over, focused on a movement.

It had ended before Roy knew what he'd done.

He deserved no absolution from the circumstances, and wanted none.

"Too bad, you're getting it anyway," Pinako declared before she started weeping into his shirt.

For all of them.

...

Winry was waiting for him on the train.

"I get the weekend off," she explained. "And you shouldn't have to ride the train alone, after..."

"Thank you." He sat down beside her, despite the empty space.

They were alone.

"Aren't _you_ going to ask?"

"I figured it out a while ago. You didn't mean to, right?"

He nodded. "How long have you known?"

"I started suspecting it once I got to know you. And then I got Hawkeye to confirm it."

"So, on your twenty-first birthday, when said you'd forgiven me...?"

"I knew, Roy." She hugged him. "I knew."


End file.
